Haunted
by Dark-heika
Summary: If he had known then, he wouldn't have done what he did. But he hadn't, and now the most ambitious man on Zi had the perfect pilot as his pawn. One-shot.


Disclaimer-Despite having fangirled over Raven for... only forever... I still don't own zoids.

* * *

He knew.

Not always. When the zaber fang had first begun to attack their units, he hadn't known. No one had known, not then. They'd even accused Dan's _son_ of being the attacker. Then the zaber fang had been revealed for what it was, and still no one could beat it.

Then they were given a picture of the boy, and he couldn't believe his eyes. The face burned back through his mind, back to so many years ago. The boy Dan was going to take home with him... the one who had disappeared after the attack. Everyone believed him to be dead...

But it was quite clear now that he wasn't. Before the geno saurer had even appeared, he was convinced.

It was his fault the boy had been turned into this. So it was his responsibility to take care of him.

* * *

He should have known.

He should have guessed that the plan would be ineffective-that boy was a genius. He would have put even the hero in his shadow if he had not been under the conspirator for so long. But he hadn't trusted himself with making strategies-not since his mistake had costed his superior's life. And especially not since that same mistake had been the one that gave rise to this new problem.

But the computer had said that this strategy was perfect-there should have been no way for him to escape destruction! So how did he destroy the unit so quickly, so easily... ever since the geno saurer had first appeared, he had researched it extensively. He should have been able to instruct the hero-the owner of the one zoid that could reliably combat the geno breaker-exactly how to bring the monster down!

It was then that the full gravity of his mistake twelve years ago crashed down on him. He handed all he fought against the perfect pilot, and they had given him the perfect zoid. He had been the catalyst to the creation of a monster. And now, when he had finally felt the full force of his haunting, he had come to another realization.

He had no hope of ever being able to stop it.

* * *

_He knows._

That was the only thought he could think at that moment in time-those violet eyes, burning into his from across the hanger. The pilot was watching as the old doctor looked over the giant red zoid, repairing it, seeing what could be tweaked to make what was already the most powerful zoid in existence stronger.

He doubted he knew that he was behind the battle plan, not unless that devilish girl he travelled with had told him. And, even then, he doubted the one-time criminal particularly cared. The plan hadn't worked, after all; the whole thing had turned out to be a disaster, given all the money it took to build one gojulas, let alone a unit of them.

But then, before his role in the plan, before the first death saurer, before he had ever met the hero of the empire and the republic, long before he even had the black dragon-type zoid that followed him wherever he went, there was that time where, even after the death of his parents, he still had a chance to be happy.

Then the mirror had been brought down between the boy and his almost-brother for so many years-with one action, taken by his own hand, the grey-haired boy had become a pawn trapped in the games of a madman for so many years.

Sickened, he left the hangar, returning to his quarters. Turning off the light and settling down to sleep, he almost laughed.

He wasn't afraid to die-not after that soul-chilling glare.

Because there were three lives Raven, in the end, would take; and Halford's was just marked as one of them.

* * *

A/N-Yes, I know, I should be working on some of my other fics instead of running off writing a one-shot. But... I had a couple ideas for this fandom, I wanted to get them down before I forgot them, and I decided that, since the idea for this one-shot was simple, I might as well feed my few readers before they decide to eat me instead.

For those who actually understand what this fandom is, I'd always wondered about Colonel Halford. He was just the character I loved to hate, being the overcontrolling-type, and it was fun to watch everything blow up in his face as Raven (predictably) tore his pretty little plan apart. But, since I've been rewatching the series recently, I couldn't help but wonder why he was so... desperate to take down Raven. At the time, the geno breaker hadn't existed for long-why was he already considered an expert? Clearly, he must have been researching it quite heavily; it only made sense when I considered that he was the one who broke Shadow out of the capsule (against orders) to prevent the imperial army from capturing the black organoid.

So, I felt the need to write a one-shot about my theories on his feelings of guilt, and a possible guess about what Raven felt back. So sue me.

Hey, I'm writing still, aren't I?


End file.
